Mackworth Castle

Did You Know?

• The first Mackworth, Henry du Mackworth, appears in the Pipe Rolls of 1254.
• Rev. Charles Kerry questioned whether the castle had already declined before its sale, citing Sir Ralph Sadler's choice to lodge Mary, Queen of Scots elsewhere in 1584.
• The gatehouse is a Tudor-era addition, dated by Kerry to a little before 1500.

History

Historians can't agree on exactly when Mackworth Castle was built, with estimates ranging from the early 1300s to the late 1400s. The first person recorded with the Mackworth name, Henry du Mackworth, shows up in official records from 1254, and the family line can be traced from the early 1400s onward. The Mackworth family kept hold of the castle until around 1655 or 1656, when Sir Thomas Mackworth, the 3rd Baronet—who had already moved to Normanton in Rutland—sold it to Sir John Curzon, the 1st Baronet.

A local story claims the castle was destroyed during the English Civil War by cannon fire from a nearby hill. But Reverend Charles Kerry of the Derbyshire Archaeological Society doubted that, suggesting the castle might have already fallen into disrepair before Curzon bought it. He pointed out that if Mackworth Castle had been grand enough to host Mary, Queen of Scots, Sir Ralph Sadler wouldn't have passed it by when he was traveling with her to Tutbury.

Sadler did lodge Mary there, which annoyed Queen Elizabeth, and he wrote on February 5, 1584, explaining that he wouldn't have done so if there had been any suitable houses near that town to put her up.

What's left of the building is mostly its gatehouse, a square, heavily battlemented structure that could almost stand on its own. According to one guide, the gatehouse was added during the Tudor period; Kerry dates it to just before 1500. You can get a sense of the rest of the layout from rectangular spaces on the west side of the gatehouse, which were once courtyards. The ruined gatehouse is a Grade I listed building.

Anthony Emery, in his book on medieval houses, suggests the place was never all that impressive. He notes that a 1911 survey indicated the walls around those courtyards were probably timber-framed on low rubble walls, similar to a nearby 14th-century house belonging to the Tuchet family, for whom the Mackworths worked as stewards. Emery describes the gateway as nothing more than a showpiece, an early example of people longing for a romantic, chivalric past that was already gone.

Mackworth Castle also appears in the 1954 movie The Black Shield of Falworth, starring Tony Curtis, which is based on the 19th-century historical novel Men of Iron by American author Howard Pyle.